Fractures in Ink

by Helena Hunting

  I thought Hayden had hooked up with her a couple of times. Back before Tee, of course. I nodded.

  “She was always stealing my money and stuff. This is better. I think my new place is close to yours.”

  “Oh yeah, where abouts?” I wondered how much more chitchat I had to endure before I could ask her questions about Sarah.

  “Near Ashland and Roosevelt. It’s decent. Got a balcony and everything.”

  “That’s great. Sounds real nice.” That was definitely close to me. Probably closer than I’d like.

  “It is. You still living in the same apartment?”

  “Yeah. For now. I’ve been thinking about moving closer to Inked Armor,” I lied.

  “Oh. That’s too bad.” She looked down at the empty packet of sugar she had rolled and unrolled. Her expression was all contrived innocence when she asked, “Doesn’t Sarah live close to Inked Armor?”

  “Yeah. Across the street.” I rearranged my knife and fork, waiting.

  “I guess that’s convenient,” she muttered.

  “It was.”

  “Was?” Her eyes went wide with fake shock.

  It took a lot not to sigh at how obvious she was being. “We’re not seeing each other anymore.”

  She touched my hand. “I’m sorry. I know you liked her.”

  I pulled away and took a sip of my coffee. It tasted burned and shitty. Nothing like the coffee from Serendipity, Hayden’s aunt’s little shop across the street from Inked Armor. “Yeah, well, some things just don’t work out.”

  “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. It was only a matter of time.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder.

  I set my coffee down. “What was only a matter of time?”

  “We all cave at some point, Chris.”

  “What’re you talking about?” The waitress came by with our food, putting the conversation on hold. Candy got busy with her silverware, keeping her eyes averted.

  “Candy?”

  She glanced up. “Huh?”

  “Wanna answer that question?”

  She bit the corner of a piece of buttered toast. The restless tap of her foot made the table jiggle. “You broke it off with her, right?”

  I pushed my plate away and leaned back in my chair, having caught her in a lie. “I thought you were surprised about that.”

  “There were some rumors. You can never be sure what’s true and what’s not.”

  “So that’s why I’m here? So you can get confirmation on whether I’m still fucking Sarah?”

  “Is that all it was? Were you just fucking her, Chris? Seemed like a lot more than that.”

  Candy was playing games like she always did. That was another reason things never worked between us. She liked the drama.

  “What does it even matter? Just answer the question. What do you mean we all cave?”

  Candy knew me well enough to back off. This time she gave me a straightish answer. “I figured it was like what happened with you and me. You couldn’t deal with her job being what it is.”

  “Sarah’s job and yours are not the same. She serves people drinks. You fuck people for money. It was the lying and the getting into bed with me smelling like someone else’s dick that was our problem.”

  Candy gave me a hard look. “Jesus, Chris, you’re a damn hypocrite. I seem to remember you spending time in the back rooms with an awful lot of girls when I first met you, and I know for a fact you weren’t just getting private lap dances.”

  I looked around the busy, noisy restaurant. The couple beside us had definitely overheard, based on their shocked expressions. They turned away quickly, eyes on their food instead of us.

  I could imagine what they saw: the strung-out stripper and the tatted-up loser in worn jeans and beat-up shoes. We were a perfect pair, a few steps away from the bottom of the barrel. If it had been Sarah sitting across from me, ivory skinned and effortlessly beautiful in her blouses and dress pants, people would’ve wondered how the hell I’d managed to trick her into being with me. Even I’d wondered on more than one occasion, and felt guilty about pursuing her. For now I wanted to be the one to take care of her until she ended up with someone worthy of her.

  I lowered my voice. “When I was with you, I was only with you.”

  “Aren’t you the hero,” she bit back.

  “Not even a little bit. But serving drinks to assholes and fucking them isn’t the same thing, and you know it.”

  I was beginning to regret this breakfast. Rehashing all the shit between us wasn’t what I needed. It made me question whether I should want to keep my place in Sarah’s life, even if it was just to make sure she wasn’t making worse decisions than sleeping with me. My past wasn’t pretty, and nothing I did to make my future better would ever erase the things I’d done. If Sarah and I did get back together, I’d still shield her from who I’d been before Hayden brought me into Inked Armor and saved me from a life of poverty and debauchery—or more of that than I’d already had. I’d rotated through a lot of the girls at The Dollhouse for the same reason I think Sarah finally went out with me—being with me was often a better option than the perceived alternative.

  Candy poked at an egg with her toast until the yolk broke and bright yellow ran out the side. “I’ve never been good at saying no to the drugs, and you know how Damen was, always ready to provide for the right price.”

  “The Sanctuary’s better though, right?”

  Candy laughed. “At first it was. Right after The Dollhouse got shut down everyone was playing straight, but it’s been a while. People get lax. Xander’s good at keeping up a clean front.”

  I scrubbed a hand over my face. Xander was the manager and majority owner of The Sanctuary. Sarah couldn’t stand him, and neither could I. I wasn’t allowed in the club when she was working, because according to Xander, it impacted her ability to do her job. He wasn’t wrong.

  “So The Sanctuary’s as bad as The Dollhouse was?” I asked, pushing for more information.

  “The money’s better, so that’s something.”

  She was still playing her game.

  Balling up my napkin, I tossed it on the table. “This was a bad idea.”

  Candy grabbed my hand before I could get up. “I didn’t mean to make you upset. Look, Chris, I just figured maybe you ended things with Sarah ’cause of whatever deals she’s been making with Xander.”

  Now she had my attention. “Deals?”

  I didn’t want to think about the kinds of things those girls did for that asshole.

  “Explain, please.”

  “Maybe deals is the wrong word. It’s just gossip, so I don’t know what’s true, but she was serving left stage a couple of weeks ago. I guess it was right around the same time you stopped seeing her. I figured one had to do with the other.”

  “Left stage, huh? Just like The Dollhouse?”

  Candy gave me a piteous look. “It never changes, Chris.”

  The roll in my stomach had become a heave. The unspoken rule was that the girls dancing or serving closest to the private rooms off to the left, hidden by the tables at the back of the club, were available for additional services. For the right amount of money, and often the right type of drug, anything could be bought.

  Back when I’d been apprenticing with Damen at Art Addicts, I’d had privileges at The Dollhouse. I’d had a free pass to whatever and whoever I wanted, whenever I wanted. It was pretty fucking twisted how that place worked.

  I’d also lived in a house Damen had set up, and some of the girls rented rooms from him. It was cheap, and there hadn’t been a lot of boundaries. I’d been seventeen and surrounded by sin. My perceived innocence had been something a lot of the girls wanted to hold on to. I’d been someone to try to save, or to corrupt, depending on the person.

  Then as I got older, I’d remained the preferred option because even though emotions weren’t involved, I was always safe. I was always good to whoever I was with, and the girls knew that.

  Candy had been a wai
tress back then, not yet tainted by the lifestyle she now found herself caught in. I’d decided I wanted her, and I gave up everyone else so I could be with just her. But I couldn’t give her what Damen could: numbness and lots of extra money to pay for her nightly chemical lobotomy.

  I didn’t want to believe Sarah had fallen into that trap. She was strong willed, smart, and she’d managed to stay off the pole so far. But I also knew Xander had been pushing her to get up on the stage. That had been my main concern about her staying there, and I’d used Candy’s downward spiral as an example of how quickly things could change. But Sarah had assured me she was only staying until she finished school. Still, no matter her bigger plans, once she stepped over that line, it would be impossible to come back. Sitting across from Candy, I could see exactly how right I’d been about that.

  The lines weren’t blurred at that point; they were erased.

  I didn’t want to ask the question, but I had to, because I needed the answer more than I needed the illusion. “Has she been in the private rooms?”

  Candy shook her head. She’d started ripping up her napkin. “I don’t know about that.”

  “You don’t know or you don’t want to say?”

  “I honestly don’t know. I figured if you stopped seeing her, there had to be some good reason, especially with how Xander treats her different than the other girls who waitress.”

  “Different how?” I pressed.

  “I don’t know how to explain it.”

  “Well, try, please.” My patience was thinning. All the worst possible scenarios ran through my head, and each ended with Sarah being screwed by someone other than me, possibly her asshole boss. If I’d been under any misapprehension about my feelings for Sarah, there was no denying it now. I’d managed to fall for a woman I didn’t deserve, but wanted to.

  I wanted to commit murder at the thought of Xander or anyone else’s hands on Sarah. I wanted to chop her boss’s fingers off and shove them up his ass. Which was exceedingly violent, even for me.

  “Oh God,” Candy whispered.

  “What?”

  “You’re in love with her.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “You love her.” Her brown eyes, colored blue with contacts, went wide and watery. “What is it about her? Why didn’t you ever feel like that about me?”

  “Shit, Candy, I don’t know. I was young. It was years ago.” I gestured between us. “A lot has changed. How I feel about Sarah isn’t relevant, and you’re skirting the question. How is Xander different with her?”

  “He’s—” Candy poked at her yolk some more with her toast, watching as the yellow liquid seeped into her hash browns. “Protective,” she finally said.

  “Protective how?”

  “It’s no secret he wants her on the stage. Of all the girls, she’s the one he’s been pushing the most. I think he puts up with crap from her that he wouldn’t from other girls ’cause he knows she’d bring in mad bank. Like, she gets bitchy with him, and usually that would land a girl on left stage to teach her a lesson ’cause those guys get all righteous and touchy, even before they put money out. But he hasn’t done that with Sarah—until that one time two weeks ago. I don’t know. It seems like something’s going on. Maybe he’s finally getting to her.”

  I leaned back in my chair, observing Candy’s mannerisms. I couldn’t decide on her motive. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I just thought you should know.” She stuffed a forkful of egg into her mouth.

  “So you’re trying to be nice?”

  She shrugged and covered her mouth with her hand instead of swallowing before she answered. “I figured it would be good information to have, in case you decided you wanted to get back together with her.”

  “She’s the one who broke it off,” I said, setting her straight. “I’m pretty sure she’s not interested in changing that, so that’s not likely.”

  She dropped her hand. “Oh. I didn’t know.”

  “Well, you and Sarah aren’t exactly friendly with each other, right?” I checked the time on my phone. I still had a while before my first appointment, but I was pretty much done here. “I gotta head to the shop.”

  “But you haven’t eaten anything.” Candy gestured to my untouched plate.

  “I don’t have much of an appetite right now.”

  Candy put her hand on my arm. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “What did you think was going to happen when you told me the chick I’ve been seeing is probably screwing other people for money?”

  “It’s just rumors, Chris.”

  “So why bother telling me at all? Unless there’s more you’re not saying.”

  Candy bowed her head so I couldn’t see her expression. It was hard to know how much of this was an act.

  “Has Sarah gotten into the drugs?” I asked.

  Sarah worked insane hours that she had to balance with school. It wasn’t much of a leap for her to pop uppers to manage her exhaustion. I knew she’d been worried about the demands of her internship and her job.

  “Maybe? I don’t know. They’re kinda hard to avoid.”

  This conversation was turning into a circle jerk. When the waitress passed us again, I asked for the check.

  “Can we get takeout boxes?” Candy asked.

  I was about to say I didn’t need one, but that would be a waste, even if cold eggs were a poor excuse for a meal. As a kid there often hadn’t been enough food at my house, either because we hadn’t had the money, or because my mom hadn’t had time to get to the store. Often it was both. As a result, I tried not to be wasteful.

  Candy finished her eggs before the waitress returned with boxes and the bill. I passed her the containers and pulled out my wallet.

  “You don’t have to get this.” She didn’t make a move for her purse.

  “It’s on me.”

  She gave me a small smile. “Thanks. I caught some trouble with Xander last week and he’s cut my shifts back.”

  “What kind of trouble?” I tossed a couple of bills on the table, covering the check and leaving a decent tip.

  “I did something I shouldn’t have behind his back. He’s just trying to teach me a lesson like he does. Ain’t nothing I haven’t learned before.” She sounded bitter. Candy transferred the remnants of her toast and hash browns into the Styrofoam container. Then she did the same with mine.

  We left the restaurant. The morning was warming up, promising to turn into a nice day. Outside the dimly lit diner, Candy looked even more worn out, the shadows under her eyes accented by her heavy makeup.

  “Still on a bike?” Candy observed when I stopped at the Kawasaki and picked up my helmet.

  “Yup. Where’s your ride?” I glanced down the street.

  Candy dropped her head, kicking at a stone close to her toe. “My wheels got confiscated.”

  “Confiscated? You get a DUI or something?”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “You park in a bad spot?”

  “Xander was leasing me a car, but when I pissed him off, he took it back. It’s gonna take a bit to earn it again.”

  Jesus. She sounded like a scolded kid who’d had her Xbox taken away. “What the hell is he leasing you a car for?”

  “Perks for bringing in big bank.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Candy. What does earning it back entail?”

  “Nothing you wanna hear about.”

  I scratched the back of my neck. “You should get outta there.”

  Candy regarded me sadly. “I shoulda gotten out of there when I had something worth getting out for.”

  “You gotta get out for you, not any other reason.”

  “Maybe if I had you again, I’d be able to get clean and get a real job.” She brushed my knuckles with her fingers.

  I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “That’s not gonna happen.”

  “Because you’re in love with Sarah.”

  “Because we’ve already been down
that road, and I’m not willing to go there again.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” Her remorse seemed genuine.

  “I gotta get going; I’ve got a full day booked. You need a ride?”

  “It’s okay. I can walk.”

  “It’s kinda a long way, isn’t it?” If she lived anywhere close to me, she’d be looking at half a dozen blocks. She wasn’t wearing shoes meant for that kind of distance. I had to wonder where she’d come from to pick this diner, but I wasn’t about to ask. The answer was probably another thing I didn’t want to know anything about.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  I passed her Sarah’s helmet. As much as I regretted this meeting with her, it wasn’t her fault she’d ended up the way she had. Part of the reason Candy and I had worked at all was that we both came from shitty homes where the options were limited. She just didn’t have the strength or will to change any more.

  Sarah’s upbringing hadn’t been a whole lot better than mine, from the little she’d told me: single parent, poverty, a lot of moving around. But she’d made better choices, done things to make her future brighter, apart from her current job, anyway.

  It had been a long time since Candy had been on the back of my bike. Her arms around my waist felt foreign and wrong. I was glad it was a short trip to her apartment. She wasn’t wrong about the location; she was only a few blocks away from my place. Her neighborhood was a slight upgrade from mine, and the building seemed secure, which was a good thing.

  In Candy’s line of work, she could never be too careful. Those guys who frequented the club weren’t the most upstanding members of society, especially the ones who partook in the private-room opportunities.

  I pulled up in front of her building and cut the engine, flipping up my visor. It was a relief when she wasn’t touching me anymore. She took off her helmet, and I reattached it to the back of the seat.

  “Thanks a lot for agreeing to see me.” Candy fluffed out her hair self-consciously and gave me a shy smile. “Do you want to come up and see my place?”

  “I gotta go to work.”

  “Right. Of course. Maybe another time?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Not even for old-time’s sake? It’s okay if you still have feelings for Sarah. You could even pretend I’m her.”